Introduction to Theatre during the Renaissance

The rebirth of the theatre in Europe took on at least two directions.
The first direction was based upon the recreation of the past in
a movement we call Neoclassicism. Theatre arts under this era resembled
the perspective paintings of the time. Theatre like the other arts
needed to follow the rules of the ancients as interpreted by the
moderns.

The other direction of the theatre was more focused upon the words
and scenarios of the Elizabethans and Spaniards. The theatre of
England was the most prolific in the works of Shakespeare, Jonson,
Marlow and others. Spanish Theatre resembled Elizabethan theatre
in its presentation but relied more upon religious subject and medieval
conventions rather than upset the strong religious influence of
the church and government. Theatre was here to stay for the most
part and would continue to grow into new forms as the countries
it would reside in would change their political, moral, and social
beliefs and would be influenced by others.

Italian
theatre

Renaissance Italian theater developed in the courts of the nobility
in settings that differed radically from those of the past. The
invention of perspective painting in the 14th and 15th centuries
led to painted scenery that attempted to create the illusion of
reality. The most influential theatrical work of the Renaissance
was the Second Book of Architecture, by Sebastiano Serlio (1545;
Eng. trans., 1611), which proposed three basic perspective scenes--tragic,
comic, and satiric--to correspond with the work performed. The scenes
consisted of a painted backdrop and three pairs of angled side-wings--
freestanding units that masked the space on either side of the stage.

Serlio's scenes were permanent, but as court
productions became more elaborate it became necessary to change
scenery during a performance. Movable scenery evolved over a 200-year
period and was a major innovation of the Renaissance theater.

The first practical system was introduced about
1600. Known as flat-wing and groove, it consisted of a series of
flats--canvas -covered frames on which scenery was painted--set
in grooves on the stage floor. Flats could be pulled offstage to
reveal a second set. The major disadvantages of this arrangement
were the number of stagehands required and the difficulty of coordinating
changes. This problem was solved in 1645 by Giacomo Torelli (1608-78)
with the chariot-and-pole system. Flats were mounted on poles that
passed through slots in the floor to rolling wagons, or "chariots,"
beneath the stage. These, in turn, were attached to winches by a
system of ropes and pulleys. Changes of scenery became so fascinating
that they were frequently made during a performance for no dramatic
reason.

Monumental scenic design was made possible in the 17th century
by the use of multiple perspective. Although sets still fostered
the illusion of reality, they created the illusion that the world
of the stage was of a larger scale than that of the audience, thereby
reinforcing the sense of distance between stage and auditorium.
The mythical and allegorical content of the plays was aided by complex
machinery, especially flying apparatus such as chariots and "cloud
machines." Grandiose Italianate design reached its peak with the
Bibiena family, whose designs were popular throughout 18th-century
Europe.

Renaissance architects attempted to re-create
Greek and Roman theaters, but because their information was often
ambiguous or incomplete, the result was a new style of theater architecture.
Serlio adapted the Roman form to rectangular palace halls, but no
building specifically designed as a theater was constructed until
the 1530s. The oldest surviving Renaissance theater is Andrea Palladio's
Teatro Olimpico.

The major development in Renaissance theater
architecture was the proscenium arch--a curved or rectangular frame
enclosing the stage--which is found in many modern theaters. The
first theater to use the proscenium arch was the Teatro Farnese
(1619) in Parma, Italy, designed by Giovanni Battista Aleotti (1546-1636).
The proscenium arch masks the offstage space and aids scenic illusion
by separating the stage and auditorium; the audience must look through
the opening onto the stage. The U-shaped seating area for the audience
in the Teatro Farnese also influenced theater design and is now
a common feature of European theaters and Opera Houses. The Teatro
Farnese was the first theater designed for the use of movable scenery
and one of the first to use a curtain in front of the proscenium
arch. Its steeply banked seating tiers held an audience of 3,500,
who came to see the fabulous spectacles that only a theater of this
size and complexity could mount: not only opera, ballet, and drama,
but--on the spacious orchestra floor separating the audience from
the stage--extravaganzas and ceremonials of all kinds.

The origins of Commedia dell'Arte are not clear. Historians have
several theories. Yet, all agree that commedia emerged during the
Renaissance in Tuscany, Italy around 1545 and continued until the
middle of the eighteenth century. One popular theory is that commedia
is traced back to the Roman farce, Atellan., of the 3 century BC.
Fabulae atellanae were short, largely improvised plays based on
everyday situations and mythology. Many times one character would
mime as another narrated. It had four principle characters, each
with a fixed costume and mask: Pappos, a silly old man, Bucco, a
comic know-it-all, Maccus, the fool, and Dossenus, a sly hunchback.
Therefore, many historians link this to the vecchi and the two zanni,
Pulcinella one of them, of commedia.

Other scholars trace Commedia to the takeoffs of he comedies of
Plautus and Terence or the Italian commedia erudita (learned comedy
performed by amateurs). Plautus used varied poetic meters, witty
jokes, and thrived on farce. Terence introduced more complex plots
and combined more than one story line. Then, of course, there are
the fairs, marketplaces and the famous Carnival in Rome and Venice
where street performers prevailed. No theory has been proven or
refuted. More than likely Commedia dell'Arte was developed by result
of a conglomeration of many influences. No matter the source, by
1600 commedia had spread throughout Europe, becoming a popular for
of entertainment loved by all classes of societies.

Elizabethan Drama

The Immortal Bard

The Elizabethan Age in England showered the world with a burst
of brilliant playwrights. Four of the most well-known of early Elizabethan
playwrights were John Lyly, Thomas Kyd, Robert Greene, and Christopher
Marlowe. John Lyly’s most famous work is “Endimion, Man in Moon.”
Thomas Kyd is the author of “Spanish Tragedy.” Robert Greene is
best known for “Friar Bacon Friar Bungay.” Many people think that
Christopher Marlowe was the greatest of early Elizabethan writers.
His most well-known play is “Doctor Faustus.” This play is about
a man named Faustus who sells his soul to the devil in exchange
for power on earth. Christopher Marlowe was born shortly before
William Shakespeare. He was supposed to be a shoemaker. The Archbishop
of Canterbury offered him a scholarship to Cambridge University,
but Christopher avoided becoming shoemaker to enter the theater.
He started writing plays for an acting company called the Admiral’s
Men. His major literary works were tragedies, as lots of Elizabethan
dramas were. Other than “Doctor Faustus”, his other two greatest
works were “Tamburlaine” and “Jew of Malta.” Marlowe’s major literary
achievements are the use of refined blank verse, spiritual drama,
dramatic action, and the Rennaisance hero. He loved learning and
hated ignorance. This was apparent in many of his literary works.
Marlowe was a friend of Sir Walter Raleigh and a favorite of Queen
Elizabeth, even though records show that Marlowe was not gentleman.
Christopher Marlowe’s roommate accused him of atheism and treason,
which were crimes in that time. Records show that he was involved
in two tavern brawls. In one of the brawls, a man lost his life.
In the other brawl, Marlowe was stabbed in the eye. He died three
days later. Conspiracy has been suspected about his death. Marlowe,
Lyly, Kyd, Greene are known as the University Wits. They defined
the London Theater.

William Shakespeare wrote in the middle of the Elizabethan Period,
and he is the most famous writer in the era; maybe the greatest
of all time. His plays have very good plots, characterization, and
backgrounds. Other than tragedy, which was the most common drama
of the time, Shakespeare wrote great comedies, tragicomedies, and
histories. His characters come alive, and they are admired and even
envied by people. His plots are full of action. “Hamlet” was the
most popular of his tragedies. Shakespeare’s most successful comedy
was “A Midsummer Night’s Dream.” Perhaps his most famous tragicomedy
was “The Tempest”. “Richard III” and Henry V” are two of Shakespeare’s
histories that have been made into motion pictures. Shakespeare
combined the best aspects of Elizabethan drama with classic drama.
This enriched his imagination and humor. The age of Shakespeare
was a great time in English history.

There are many important events that occurred during the Elizabethan
Period. In approximately 1477, Caxton set up a printing press, and
he printed the first books in England. Around 1500, “Everyman”,
a morality play, was written and performed. In 1533, John Heywood’s
“The Play of the Weather” was performed. A poetry collection called
“Tottle’s Miscellany” was published in 1557. This work included
Wyatt and Surrey’s sonnets. Besides drama, the sonnet is the epitome
of literature in the Elizabethan period. In 1564, William Shakespeare
and Christopher Marlowe were born. “The Theatre”, the first permanent
structure for plays in England, was constructed in 1576. Christopher
Marlowe directed his first play, “Tamburlaine”, in 1587. In 1590,
Shakespeare directed his first play, “The Comedy of Errors.” Christopher
Marlowe wrote “The Jew of Malta”a year later. He was killed in 1593.
Shakespeare wrote “The Merchant of Venice” in 1597. In 1599, the
Globe Theater was constructed. Shakespeare wrote “Macbeth” in 1605.
He died in 1616.

Another very important aspect of Elizabethan Drama were the audiences.
The audiences were always large and very excited at plays. The common
people payed an equivalent to one penny to sit in the front fo the
theater. Unless it was raining, these people had the best seats
in the theater. The audience would participate in the play by cheering,
hissing, or even throwing rotten vegetables. The audience would
know that plays were about to be performed by a flag that rose over
the theater.

The theater played an important role in this era. Without theaters,
there would be nowhere for the play to be performed. There were
two types of theaters: indoor and outdoor. Outdoor theaters were
public theaters. “The Theatre” is an example of an outdoor theater.
Indoor theaters were private theaters. Elizabethan Actors were all
male. Females were not allowed to act in the theater. All female
parts were played by men whose voices had not changed yet. Actors
had to have good memories, strong voices, and the ability to fence.
Actors also had to have the ability to sing and dance. The costumes
that the actors wore were very elaborate, but not historic. Many
special effects were used in the theater. Death scenes were very
gory and realistic. To show an eye falling out, a grape would fall
to the floor. Animal organs were used to show scenes where organs
fell out of actors’ bodies.

The stage was the center of the theater. It had several levels.
The lowest level of the stage was used for a number of things. Devils,
ghosts, graves, and ditched are a few of them. The second level
was the main stage. This is where the most important scenes were.
The third level of the stage was a balcony. It was used for a number
of things such as mountains or city walls. The fourth level of the
stage was a series of pullys where angels, birds, and thunderbolts
could be sent down from the main stage. The highest level was a
room where the musicians were. There is one aspect of Elizabethan
Drama that still remains a mystery. Vocabulary in the Elizabethan
Era was very different than it is now. Modern historians are not
sure about all of the word meanings. This is why some of the phrases
used are hard to understand. Elizabethan Drama is a very important
addition to the literature world and also to England. Drama is part
of England’s heritage, and helps make them who they are.

The Spanish Golden Age

The Spanish Golden Age (the Siglo de Oro in Spanish) was a period
of high artistic activity and achievement that lasted from about
1580 to 1680. During this time period, El Greco and Velázquez painted
their masterpieces, and Cervantes wrote his famous, satirical novel
Don Quixote. The theatre also enjoyed a golden age in acting and
playwriting, producing plays to rival those of the Elizabethan and
Jacobean dramatists who were writing at the same time.

Theatre historians used to claim that the plays from the Golden
Age were too traditional and too concerned with a narrow code of
honor to appeal to a wide audience, but recent scholarship has proven
that the plays are as exciting, challenging, and relevant as the
works of most English and French playwrights of the time period.
In fact, the plots for many seventeenth-century English and French
plays were taken from Spanish drama.

The most famous plays of the period are the philosophical drama
Life Is a Dream by Calderón, the historical play Fuenteovejuna by
Lope de Vega, and The Trickster of Seville (about the legendary
lover, Don Juan) by Tirso de Molina. There are also great comedies,
religious dramas, farces, and tragedies by these and other playwrights.
Comedies by female playwrights (Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, Ana Caro,
María de Zayas, and Angela de Azevedo) have recently been discovered
and translated, as well.

The three major forms of Golden Age theatre are the comedia, the
auto sacramental, and the entremés. Autos sacramentales are one-act
religious allegories, and entremeses are one-act farces originally
performed between the acts of a full-length comedia. Comedias are
three-act dramas written in verse, which mix comic and serious elements
in complex plots that often emphasize intrigue, disguises, music,
and swordplay.

Le Balet Comique De La Reine: An Analysis

This study of Le Balet Comique de la Reine may be accessed in two
ways. Owing to the numerous links embedded in the Analysis, either
choice will enable the reader to access all the material in the
study.

Readers who feel comfortable browsing the material
hypertextually may do so via the Table of Contents.

Others wishing greater structure may explore this
research more traditionally, through an essay divided into Part
I, an analysis of the performance and Part II a commentary on
the philosophical ideas of the 16th century which underlie the
balet and its production.

French Neoclassicism

The 17th century in France, the age of the sun-king Louis XIV,
witnessed the rise of the neoclassical ideal and, with it, France's
three greatest masters of the drama: Corneille, Moliere, and Racine.
Following the decline of religious drama in the mid-16th century,
the French theater had been slow to develop. At the turn of the
century, however, France's first professional playwright, Alexander
Hardy, paved the way for neoclassicism in the public theaters, with
tragicomedies and pastorals loosely based on classical models.

It was Pierre Corneille's enormously popular tragedy Le Cid (1636)
and the controversy it aroused that set the standards for the rest
of the century's dramatic development. Although today it appears
thoroughly classical--a lofty drama of a national hero, his noble
lover, and their struggle with conflicting claims of honor--to the
newly formed Academie Francaise it violated certain Aristotelian
precepts. Despite this adverse judgment, Corneille went on to create
a string of tragedies--among them Horace (1640), Cinna (1641), and
Polyeucte (1642)--that are still mainstays of the French repertoire.

Jean Racine experienced his first success with the tragedy Andromaque
in 1667. Three years later, when his Berenice proved more popular
than Corneille's dramatization of the same story, his success eclipsed
that of the master. Whether his settings were Greek, as with Phedre
(1677), Roman, as in Britannicus (1669), or Oriental, as in Bajazet
(1672), his major tragedies all delve beneath the classical surface
to probe the irrational, fierce, sometimes uncontrollable emotions
occasioned by the onset of love.

Jean Baptiste Poquelin, who took the stage name of Moliere to
spare his family embarrassment when he became the manager and leading
actor of a struggling theatrical troupe, began his career by adapting
Italian farces for the French stage, imitating the improvisational
style and character types of the commedia dell'arte. When finally
he branched out from farce to write his own comic satires, he both
delighted and scandalized his Parisian audiences. His satire was
by no means tender; Tartuffe (1664) attacked false religiosity,
and the darkly philosophical Don Juan (1665) provoked a number of
powerful enemies. Yet his comedies of character, such as The Misanthrope
(1666), The Miser (1668), and The Imaginary Invalid (1673), together
with the neoclassical comedy Amphitryon (1668), the comedy-ballet
The Bourgeois Gentleman (1670), and his continuing output of farces
established him as France's leading comic playwright, a position
that has gone unchallenged to this day.

Christopher
Marlowe

Marlowe, Christopher, 1564–93, English
dramatist and poet, b. Canterbury. Probably the greatest English
dramatist before Shakespeare, Marlowe was educated at Cambridge
and he went to London in 1587, where he became an actor and dramatist
for the Lord Admiral's Company. His most important plays are the
two parts of Tamburlaine the Great (c. 1587), Dr. Faustus (c. 1588),
The Jew of Malta (c. 1589), and Edward II (c. 1592). Marlowe's dramas
have heroic themes, usually centering on a great personality who
is destroyed by his own passion and ambition. Although filled with
violence, brutality, passion, and bloodshed, Marlowe's plays are
never merely sensational. The poetic beauty and dignity of his language
raise them to the level of high art. Most authorities detect influences
of his work in the Shakespeare canon, notably in Titus Andronicus
and King Henry VI. Of his nondramatic pieces, the best-known are
the long poem Hero and Leander (1598), which was finished by George
Chapman, and the beautiful lyric that begins “Come live with me
and be my love.” In 1593, Marlowe was stabbed in a barroom brawl
by a drinking companion. Although a coroner's jury certified that
the assailant acted in self-defense, the murder may have resulted
from a definite plot, due, as some scholars believe, to Marlowe's
activities as a government agent.

The Faust Legend

Also called 'Faustus' of 'Doctor
Faustus', the story of the German necromancer and astrologer who
sold his soul to the Devil in exchange for knowledge and power is
one of the most durable legends in western folklore. There was an
historical Faust, possible even two, one of whom more than once
alluded to the Devil as his 'Schwager', or crony. One (or both)
died around 1540, leaving behind a tangled tale of sorcery and alchemy,
astrology and sooth-saying, studies theological and diabolical,
necromancy and excess. Contemporary sources indicate that he was
widely travelled and fairly well-known, but all commentators testify
to his evil reputation. Humanist scholars of the day dismissed his
'magical feats' as pretty and fraudulent, but the Lutheran clergy,
including Martin Luther himself, took his activities seriously.
Ironically the relatively obscure Faust came to be remembered in
legend as the representative of an age which produced such occultists
as Paracelsus and Nostradamus.

Faust owes his enduring notoriety
to the anonymous author of the first 'Faustbuch', a collection of
tales of the 'Magi' (wise men skilled in science and the occult)
which had been told since the Middle Ages and featured such renowned
'wizards' as Merlin, Albertus Magnus and Roger Bacon. In the 'Faustbuch',
these stories were retold, this time with Faust as the central character.
They were crudely narrated and supplemented with clumsy humour at
the expense of Faust's victims.It was less the stories themselves
and more the author's graphic and unflinching descriptions of hell
and the state of his hero's mind which inspired unquestioning belief
among readers. Indeed, some of the passages were used verbatim by
Thomas Mann for his 1947 novel 'Doktor Faustus'.

The 'Faustbuch' was swiftly
translated and read throughout Europe. An English prose translation
of 1592 was the likely inspirations for Marlowe's famous play which,
for the first time, invested in the Faust legend with a tragic dignity,
although, in spite of magnificent scenes of dramatic poetry, such
as the summoning from the Underworld the manifestation of Helen
of Troy, Marlowe's 'Doctor Faustus' retained much of the clowning
and comic buffoonery of the source text. This blend of high tragedy
and coarse burlesque remained as inherent part of subsequent 'Faust'
dramas and puppet plays which held sway during the following two
centuries. Yet, despite the comic antics of 'Caspar the Clown' and
other grotesques, Fautus's ultimate damnation remained awash with
lashings of high drama and epic poetry.

There was even a lucrative
trade in do-it-yourself magic books bearing Faustus's name, complete
with instructions on how to avoid the pact with the Devil or, if
necessary, how to break it. The most famous of these works, 'Magi
Naturalis et Innaturalis', was to be found in the grand-ducal library
in 'Weimar' and would certainly been known to the German intelligentsia.

The German writer Gotthold
Lessing undertook to bring Faustus to salvation in an unfinished
play (c. 1784). Lessing, an enlightened rationalist, saw Faustus's
pursuit of knowledge as a noble obsession and arranged for a reconciliation
with God. This theme was pursued by the outstanding chronicler of
the Faust legend, J.W. Von Goethe. His 'Faust' (part 1, 1808; part
2 1832) made of the story a profoundly serious yet highly ironical
commentary on the diverse potentialities of Western society's cultural
heritage. The poem contains a wide range of epic, lyical, operatic
and balletic elements, exploiting an assortment of poetic styles,
to present an immensely varied commentary which included elements
of theology, philosophy, political economy, science, aesthetics,
music and, of course, literature. In the end, God saves Faust by
bringing about his purification and redemption.

Hector Berlioz was inspired
by a French version of Goethe's work to create his own dramatic
cantata, 'The Damnation of Faust', which was first performed in
1846 and is still regularly staged as an opera. Gounod's 'Faust',
premiered in 1859, was based on part 1 of Goethe's epic.

In the 19th and 20th centuries,
many other writers sought, with limited success, to emulate Goethe's
salvation of Faust's soul, while others retained Marlowe's grim
finale. In recent times, some have seen in the legend an equation
of the dangers of seeking absolute knowledge and power in a nuclear
age which possesses absolute destructive capability.An
earlier 'collage' production of 'Doctor Faustus' by Charles Marowitz
compared Faustus to the architect of modern atomic weaponry, J.
Robert Oppenheimer, giving expression to the widely-held fear that
the Faustian spirit of insatiable scientific enquiry has been given
an all-too evident modern expression.

The Origins of Dr. John Faustus

Marlowe the Magician

Summary of Doctor Faustus

Faustus was born into lowly circumstances. He studies hard and
masters all the knowledges known to man, but he is still dissatisfied.
Faustus determines to study magic, the one knowledge that can break
the limits of all others. He engages two master magicians to teach
him. While he awaits their arrival, a good and an evil angel appear.
The good angel urges him not to go through with his plans, but Faustus
is determined. He learns quickly and for his first act calls up
Mephistophilis, Satan's messenger. Faustus is very pleased, thinking
he has control over the forces of evil, but Mephistophilis says
he only showed up because Faustus had rejected God. Faustus offers
to give his soul to Lucifer if Mephistophilis will wait on him for
twenty-four years. Lucifer agrees.

Faustus is not troubled by this pact because he does not believe
in eternal life. With Mephistophilis' help, Faustus makes a great
career for himself. He amazes the Pope by becoming invisible and
stealing things from his hands. He calls forth the spirit of Alexander
the Great for the Emperor. As his twenty-four years draw to a close,
he begins to fear Satan and nearly repents. Instead, he asks Mephistophilis
to bring him Helen of Troy to be his lover in his final moments.
Just before his end, he reveals to his fellow scholars how he gained
his powers. He is then carried off by a group of devils.

About
Doctor Faustus

Classics
versus moderns

There
are those who maintain that the Greeks are closer to us than the
Elizabethans. 'Thucydides is more modern than Sir Walter Raleigh',
writes Matthew Arnold, comparing two historians, one from 400 BC
and the other, 2,000 years closer to us in time, from 1600 AD. The
Greeks certainly seem more humane, more natural and spontaneous,
than many bombastic, bigoted witch-hunting types from the Middle
Ages and from more recent periods - and I am not just thinking of
Dr Ian Paisley and the IRA. The question of whether and how Greek
culture, Greek values, Greek art can be transposed into a modern
environment is one which has occupied and preoccupied many thinkers
from the Renaissance onwards. But we would do well to begin by remembering
that the Greeks and Romans were very different from later generations
in three important respects:

They
worshipped a plurality of deities, and seemed to have no difficulty
in believing that the 'gods' were a disorderly group of scoundrels
who could harm as well as help individual human beings for reasons
that were not always clearly discernible. (Why is Oedipus punished
so dreadfully? Why is the noble Achilles, the pacifist among
the warring Greeks, slaughtered despite his great strength and
the protection of the immortals? Why is crafty Odysseus rewarded,
as virtually the only Greek warrior to return home unscathed
after the Trojan War?) These gods not only acted arbitrarily,
but required frequent sacrifices to be made to them.

Greece
and Rome were slave-owning societies. Some moderns argue that
slaves were little worse off than Victorian servants, reasonably
well fed and well looked after. Not all slaves were exploited,
some were teachers and craftsmen. The Romans, unlike the Greeks,
would tend to free their slaves after a few years. But the conditions
in which most of them worked were squalid; the galley slaves
on the ships, the slaves in the Athenian silver mines being
particularly crass examples of ruthless bondage, degradation
and exploitation. Such conditions were not widespread in Europe
after the Middle Ages. They are particularly disturbing, because
they do not accord well with the Greeks' lofty ideals on the
dignity of life and the need for humane principles of conduct.

The
sexual behaviour of Greeks and Romans was very different from
that of the post-classical nations. In ancient Greece, homosexual
love was widespread, and what we nowadays call child abuse was
accepted and even regarded as character forming. Marriage was
not seen as either 'romantic' or as indissoluble; and the keeping
of mistresses and concubines was accepted, if not exactly encouraged.
Prostitution was a fact of life and there is little evidence
of the existence of the sexually transmitted diseases that were
to plague Europe from the 16th century onwards.

With
our next tragedy, Christopher Marlowe's Tragicall History of
D. Faustus, we enter the world of the late Middle Ages. In fact,
the MA are over, but superstitions linger on, magicians are rumoured
to practise their black arts, the Church has a dominating role in
the lives of all individuals. They may all style themselves Christians,
but their understanding of Christianity is very different from our
own. In the 16th century, people believed literally in the existence
of Hell and in the physical reality of the Devil. You may say that
Christians nowadays haven't completely relinquished such beliefs;
many, if questioned, would affirm that they recognise Hell and the
Devil as real. But there are few who would go so far as to maintain
that an otherwise good person, who had by chance failed to be baptised,
or had omitted to confess a sin, or had used swear words or not
abstained from meat during Lent would, as a punishment, be burnt
in real, terrifyingly painful fires for the rest of eternity, i.e.
for ever and ever and ever. One could easily argue that Christianity
as understood and practised in Luther's time was as distinct from
modern Christianity represented by Archbishop Carey and Pope John
Paul as modern Christianity is from Islam or Judaism. Even articles
of faith central to the Christain creed (such as the resurrection
of the flesh) are now viewed sceptically by many practising Christians.

The
tragic potential of a tale of sinfulness within a Christian moral
framework is obvious. The sinner is damned to an existence even
worse than anything that could have befallen the ancients (unless
you happened to be Tantalus or Sisyphus). The theme of Hell and
its torments seems tailor-made for a tragic catastrophe; there is
one little problem only: to be certain that the sinner will indeed
go to Hell, s/he must be truly evil - otherwise there is, even in
the narrowly dogmatic view, the potential of forgiveness and redemption.
So will we get a 'tragic hero' who can hold his own in a post-classical
moral context? The case of Doctor Faustus, part fiend, part superman,
provides some tentative answers.

Source
of the material: The Chapbook of Dr Faustus

Whether
a 'Doctor Faustus' ever lived will never be known. There are around
500 references to doctors of the black arts, some of whom styled
themselves 'Faustus' ('favoured one'), popping up in various parts
of Europe during the first half of the 16th century. Typically,
Doctor Faustus would cast horoscopes, foretell ill luck, or sell
magical potions. It was often rumoured that Doctor Faustus was in
league with the devil. Whether this was a sales gimmick on the part
of the magician or an attempt to defame him on the part of the church
remains uncertain. But the references are fragmentary and inconsistent.
In 1532, the council of Nuremberg decreed that 'The great sodomite
and necromancer Doctor Faustus was to be denied safe conduct' (Doctor
Fausto dem grossen Sodomitten und Nigromantico zu furr, glait ablainen).
Yet a few years earlier, the bishop of Bamberg paid Doctor Faustus
10 guilders for a horoscope. The original receipt, dated 1520, can
be admired in the Bavarian State Archives. People have speculated
endlessly about the magician's provenance and movements, but there
is no certainty. Several towns in Germany have a 'Faust-House' or
a 'Faust Museum' (Knittlingen), but the associations are tenuous,
often the products of 19th century neo-Romantic fantasies. Two dates
stick out:

1505
a student called 'Johann Faust' from 'Simmern' matriculates
at the University of Heidelberg;

1540
references to Doctor Faustus cease; this is the presumed (approximate)
date of his death.

See
also: E.M. Butler: The Fortunes of Faust (Cambridge 1952)
and The Myth of the Magus (Cambridge 1948); P.M. Palmer and
R.P. More: The Sources of the Faust Tradition from Simon Magus
to Lessing (New York 1936); Dorothy L. Sayers, 'The Faust Legend
and the Idea of the Devil', Publications of the English Goethe
Society (1946), pp. 1-20.

We
are on safer ground when we consider the first published account
of Doctor Faustus's life: a volume entitled Historia of D. Johann
Faustus, published anonymously in Frankfurt in 1587. We know
nothing about its author. The publisher, John Spies, claims that
the manuscript had been sent to him 'by a good friend in Speyer'.
It is a typical Volksbuch (chapbook) of a type popular in
sixteenth-century Europe. It tells a story, punctuated by anecdotes
and sermonising, and culminates in a series of deadly earnest warnings
not to imitate the actions of the central character. Most other
chapbooks either retold biblical episodes, classical myths and fables
or mediaeval epics, or related the pranks of some more or less comic
modern folk-hero (Owlglass). But what is truly remarkable is that
the tale of Doctor Faustus depicted a 24-year 'relationship' between
a man and a devil. This had never been attempted before: hence the
immense success of the work. Within a couple of years, its fame
had spread across Europe; Empson describes it as 'one of the first
international best sellers'. In six years it had appeared in six
languages, and in 1592 it was translated into English by P.F. Gent
(or 'P. F., gentleman'). It is here that Christopher Marlowe found
the material for his play on the subject.

Extract
from the English version of 1592

Then
Faustus said vnto him, I am not able to resist nor bridle
my fantasie, I must and will haue a wife, and I pray thee giue
thy consent to it. Sodainlie vpon these words came such a whirle-winde
about the place, that Faustus thought the whole house
would come down, all the doores in the house flew off the hookes:
after all this, his house was full of smoke, and the floore
couered ouer with ashes: which when Doctor Faustus perceiued,
he would haue gone Vp the staires: and flying Vp, he was taken
and throwne into the hall, [page 11] that he was not able to
stir hand nor foote: then round about him ran a monstrous circle
of fire, neuer standing still, that Faustus fried as
hee lay, and thought there to haue been burned. Then cried hee
out to his Spirit Mephostophiles for help, promising
him hee would liue in all things as he had vowed in his hand-writing.
Hereupon appeared vnto him an ougly Diuell, so fearefull and
monstrous to beholde, that Faustus durst not looke on
him. The Diuell said, what wouldst thou haue Faustus:
how likest thou thy wedding? what minde art thou in now': Faustus
answered, he had forgot his promise, desiring him of pardon,
and he would talke no more of such things. The diuell answered,
thou were best so to doe, and so vanished.

After
appeared vnto him his Frier Mephostophiles with a bel
in his hand, and spake to Faustus: It is no iesting with
vs, holde thou that which thou hast vowed, and wee will performe
as wee haue promised: and more than that, thou shalt haue thy
hearts desire of what woman soeuer thou wilt, bee shee aliue
or dead, and so long as thou wilt, thou shalt keepe her by thee.

These
words pleased Faustus wonderfull well, and repented himselfe
that hee was so foolish to wish himselfe married, that might
haue any woman in the whole Citie brought to him at his command;
the which he practised and perseuered in a long time.

Later
generations have treated the story of Doctor Faustus as the tragedy
of the knowledge-seeker. Like King Oedipus, Doctor Faustus wants
to find out more than it is good for him to know. It is therefore
only right that he should be a university don. He teaches at Wittenberg,
the university most closely associated with Martin Luther. But unlike
Luther, he goes against the Bible. Doctor Faustus is not only a
seeker after knowledge, he is a seeker after secular knowledge,
which in the view of the time is associated with witchcraft, is
forbidden, and is also somehow linked with the study of the classics
(Doctor Faustus begins by reading Aristotle and ends up desiring
Helen of Troy). From a Christian point of view, he is 'damnable'
for rejecting the Bible - and in the 16th century many churchmen
saw the study of classical authors as tantamount to casting away
the scriptures and immersing oneself in the necessarily sinful writings
of pagan authors.

We
could of course decide to view Faustus through more modern eyes,
particularly through the eyes of those who, in the eighteenth century,
used him as an example of a positive thirst for knowledge, as a
'striver', as someone who anticipates the Age of Reason and tries
to stand on his own two feet and work out his own salvation, be
it through necromancy. But there is one problem with this view:
Christopher Marlowe's Faustus is motivated, largely, but not perhaps
entirely, by a desire for pleasure. Hedonistically, he wants the
spirits, once in his service, to

[…]
fly to India for gold,
ransack the ocean for orient pear,
and search all corners of the new found world
for pleasant fruits and princely delicates. (1:82-85)

In
his aspirations, he mixes a desire for knowledge with a no less
strong desire for pleasure, power, and the rape of overseas provinces,
which were beginning to be colonised and exploited at the time.
There is something of the rude soldier of fortune in him: 'As Indian
Moors obey their Spanish lords' (Valdes, 1:121) draws a specific
analogy between the quest for hidden knowledge and the brutal activities
of the colonial powers (ironically claiming to ensure the spread
of Christianity!).

The
structure of Doctor Faustus

Since
the first published version of Christopher Marlowe's Doctor Faustus
dates from eleven years after the author's death, and people in
those days were not over-scrupulous in passing on the poet's words
in the way they had been written down; since laws were being enacted
governing what people might and might not say on stage, it is hardly
surprising that many have disputed that any of the texts that have
come down to us is an exact record of what Marlowe wrote. McAlindon
and others speak of 'a cathedral hit by a bomb'; but there is uncertainty
as to what is rubble and what is part of the original edifice. A
certain amount of cherry-picking has taken place, with critics like
F. D. Covella arguing that Marlowe should be credited with the 'covenant'
or 'pact' scenes, and with the 'punishment' scene at the end, but
that the scenes in between, particularly the humorous adventures
of Faustus, were written by others (Studies in Engl. Literature
1500-1900 26 (1986), 201-215). The Chorus, attributed to Wagner,
supplies the 'fulcrum' between the two halves. Empson implies that
the good parts of Doctor Faustus are very good and that the bad
parts are a mystery. We do have a written record confirming that
two men, William Byrde and Samuel Rowle, were paid in 1602, for
supplying 'adicyones' to the text of 'docter fostes'. It is usually
assumed that these will have consisted of the more light-hearted
parts. However, there is another complicating factor, which is that
although our surviving 'A Text' dates from 1604, there is a written
record that suggests that book was first published in January 1601.

It
does not take long to realise that two conflicting elements are
juxtaposed here: scenes focusing on Faustus's pursuit of knowledge
and evil, and the battle for his soul (I, III, V, VII/1, IX, XI,
XII), alternate regularly with instances of low-life tomfoolery,
in which either his assistants attempt to mimic him (II, IV, VI,
VIII) or Faustus himself plays a trick on some unworthy opponent
(VII/2, X). Scene XI provides an explanation of sorts for how the
'magic' works (a speedy messenger produces grapes from the other
side of the world). The first part of Scene VII returns to the 'gazetteer'
function of the source, which contained instructive material designed
to educate or to reinforce knowledge: 'Know that this city stands
upon seven hills' (VII, 29). The relationship between the humour
and the serious theme has given rise to various interpretations.

Tragedy
versus comedy

The
critics divide into two groups: those who feel that given the seriousness
of the topic, Christopher Marlowe could not (or should not) have
written the comic scenes himself. Particularly the anti-Papal sections
involving the Pope (in both texts) and the papal pretender Bruno
(in the B text) were felt to detract from the earnest purpose of
the plot, in which Doctor Faustus's immortal soul is at stake. Empson
and others claim that such scenes have 'practically nothing to do
with Faust' (p. 40). There is a sense of outrage that after sensitively
written, profound verses, 'one is dropped abruptly into bilge, as
through a trap door'. Empson claims that Marlowe's greatest fault
(if Marlowe's it is) is that he shows indifference to the feelings
of the audience: 'all through the middle of the play Faust is assumed
to be a popular character, a great source of fun, and yet his enormous
punishment at the end is accepted as a matter of routine.' (Empson,
loc. cit.)

There
are a number of objections one could raise at this point. One is
that Marlowe's audiences might have looked for comic ingredients
with greater enthusiasm than for moral edification. Secondly, Elizabethan
audiences had a penchant for receiving great tragedies with a liberal
dash of humour and even, on occasions, slapstick. The combination
of the two ingredients appears to have been attractive to them.
Thirdly, Empson is patently wrong when he argues that such episodes
have 'practically nothing to do with Faust'; the chapbook in its
original form was a compendium of material from many sources: the
Bible, travelogues, elementary science manuals and, not least, joke
books. Many of the stories in this book were rude and based on stereotypes,
such as the 'hypocritical monk' or the unkind (often Jewish) moneylender.
The horse-dealer of Scene X is one such type that Marlowe adapted
for his play. But my fourth and final point is the most important
one and the most often overlooked: the Faust-chapbook of 1587 was
essentially a piece of anti-Catholic propaganda. Faustus is not
allowed to marry (attack on celibacy of Catholic clergy); Faustus
can't repent and be forgiven at the end of his life (the sacrament
of confession is ineffective), and Faustus consorts with prelates,
bishops and the Pope, in Marlowe's source, for the purpose of exposing
their gluttony, avarice and especially their hypocrisy. Therefore
the scene with the Pope is of central importance rather than an
add-on provided by an incompetent collaborator.

A
Text versus B Text

Each
has its supporters. The A Team claim that Christopher Marlowe wrote
a short digest of the chapbook, which was expanded after his death
by groups of players who needed a full evening's programme and commissioned
some hack to produce some extra padding. The B Team claim that the
opposite happened; Marlowe produced a play that was of the same
length as some of the shorter Shakespearean dramas, but after his
death it went on tour and had to be shortened (Walter Greg, Marlowe's
'Doctor Faustus' 1604-1616, 1950). One of the flaws in this
argument is that if the B text is older than A, it would have to
have been preserved for 23 years after the poet's death, then unearthed
and - most importantly, a publisher would have needed to be persuaded
that the presumed 'original' was more worthy of printing than the
current version that was being performed at the time. I therefore
side with those who see A as closer to the author's work than B
- despite the problem of its brevity. It would not have satisfied
the relatively sophisticated London audiences of the time.

Irony

Many
scholars find it impossible to accept that Christopher Marlowe,
a free-thinking individual often thought to have been a double agent
and therefore uncommitted to either of the main Christian denominations
of his time, should have composed a play which seems to endorse
orthodoxy and end, conventionally, with the magus ignominiously
condemned to hell fire. Marlowe is in the curious position of being
reprimanded both for his light-heartedness (the slapstick deemed
intrusive) and for his serious moral purpose, which is out of tune
with the spirit of the modern, secular age. Empson comes up with
an almost incredibly contorted hypothetical account of what the
play looked like before the censor, whom Empson blames for the truncations,
got his teeth into Marlowe's original text:

"To
explain the original story, Marlowe supposes a Middle Spirit
who is a quisling or rather a double agent, professing to work
for the devils, and actually inducing them to grant their powers
to Faust, but on condition that Faust gives his immortal soul
beforehand to the quisling. Faust is at first delighted by the
results but before long the intense experience becomes too much
for his nerves; he decides to repent, supposing he may yet go
to Heaven. Meph regards this as a cheat, and counters it by
saying that he really is a devil, so that Faust has really sold
his soul. To prove it he calls up the Devil and his whole court,
at the end of act II (they are a charade put on by his Middle
Spirit friends). Faust, after a brief crisis of horror, decides
to live bravely for his time on earth, and the play mentions
that he does grand things that are useful for his countrymen
(compare A: 1408 f.), but he only feels at peace when playing
practical jokes (incidentally this also satisfies the devils,
who imagine he is carrying out his promise to be an enemy of
mankind). But at the end, when Meph has succeeded in bringing
him to the agreed hour of death without having repented, so
that Meph gets his immortal soul, nothing happens except that
his old friend advances upon him with open arms and a broad
smile. The last two words of Faust are 'Ah Mephastophilis',
and the censor could not rule how the actor was to speak them.
He dies in the arms of his deceitful friend with immense relief,
also gratitude, surprise, love, forgiveness, and exhaustion.
It is the happiest death in all drama." (Empson, 121 f.)

In
this view, the play ceases to be a tragedy; nay, it becomes 'the
happiest death in all drama'. Why it should have been billed as
a tragedy is a bit of an unresolved mystery; but wherever there
is evidence of dislocations or non-sequiturs in Marlowe, Empson
immediately blames the hand of the Queen's censor, a certain Edmund
Tilney. He insisted on cutting out vital bits that would have revealed
the poet's true intentions. It's a rather cheap (because unprovable)
argument.

But
Empson does touch on a number of questions that have perplexed modern
readers. Why does Mephastophilis give Faustus ample warning about
the perils of entering into a pact with him, if he is indeed an
evil spirit desirous of corrupting his victim? Why does Faustus
play tricks on the Pope, if he is truly wicked? Surely to have seen
through the corruption of the Pope's court is a positive achievement,
one that would endear him to an overwhelmingly anti-Popish audience?
Empson uses all these details as evidence that it never was Christopher
Marlowe's intention to damn Faustus: 'One should remember that the
anathema of the Pope would give the audience strong reason to feel
that he could not really go to Hell in the end' (p. 147). These
are interesting and in some ways compelling arguments which it is
not easy to refute. I will try to make a few suggestions as to how
these inconsistencies can be resolved:

1.
Mephastophilis is not 'THE DEVIL'. He is an evil spirit, a kind
of negative angel. Just as angels are not God, evil spirits (popularly
called devils) are not the Devil. Mephastophilis is a particular
kind of evil spirit: one that encourages people to go after forbidden
knowledge: the thinking person's devil (?).

2.
Mephastophilis does not warn Faustus out of any innate goodness
of heart. He is a fallen spirit, and in pain, suffering because
of his separation from God (3:78 ff.). Like the spirits in hell,
he repents of what he has done, but not sufficiently to be forgiven.
Therefore, he alternately warns and gloats over Faustus.

3.
Faustus's exploits are, as we saw, past history. He is assumed to
have lived in the early 16th century, and was born into a world
that was entirely under the sway of the Catholic Church. Therefore
his pranks betoken irreligiosity, but without the zeal of the would-be
reformer. His attacks on the Pope are a source of laughter, not
an instrument of salvation. The 'marriage-wish' in scene 5 is positive,
and Mephastophilis mimics the Catholic church in refusing to let
Faustus marry, but instead of persevering (which might have earned
him redemption), Faustus is easily distracted by a string of concubines.

4.
Faustus is a true tragic hero: he has good qualities beside his
evil aspirations. He dutifully provides grapes in mid-winter for
the Duke of Vanholt (Anhalt?), generously bestows his worldly goods
on Wagner, punishes an uncouth knight at the Emperor's court, and
obligingly undoes the punishment again. At times he regrets what
he has done - this evidently heightens the tragic effect, but does
not make him a good person. The fact that even Mephastophilis counsels
him to desist from the pact does not prove Mephastophilis's goodness
but rather emphasises Faustus's blindness and arrogance:

Thinkst
thou that I, who saw the face of God,
And tasted the eternal joys of heaven,
Am not tormented with ten thousand hells
In being deprived of everlasting bliss! (3:78-81)

5.
Another fact that ought not to be overlooked is that many of the
inconsistencies, including the farce, the pulled-off leg (scene
10), the buffoonery in Rome and elsewhere, and even the self-deconstruction
of Mephastophilis, as an evil spirit who sees through his own evil,
are found in the original chapbook, which is a compendium of much
incongruous material. But these by-products of the story are mere
interludes and do not imply that the story is something other than
a tale of arrogance and awesome folly.

Theological
content

Some
critics have assumed that the author of the original chapbook must
have been a Catholic. Why would Doctor Faustus be associated specifically
with Luther's home university (Wittenberg), if not to expose Wittenberg
as a hot-bed of heresy? Why the references to holy relics (Longinus's
spear) in the 'travelogue' section, if the author was a Protestant
who would not have believed in such things? And it is of course
true that criticisms of monks and of other often abused malpractices,
such as the rule of celibacy, were sometimes heard from within
the Catholic church.

Nonetheless,
the central ethical content is in line with Luther's teaching. The
devil is real, he is the fiend who must be shunned, the Catholics
are under his influence, they believe that a man can be as sinful
as he likes, if only he repents at the end; Faustus demonstrates
that this is not the case. A man's whole life must be repentance
(Luther's 95 theses). Could the 'Old Man' who advises the doctor
to repent (12:26 ff.) be a representative of Lutheran values? Faustus
is too blind to recognise that genuine contrition that comes from
the heart would help towards his salvation.

But
it would be unwise to read the play or its source entirely along
Lutheran lines. G.M. Pinciss (Studies in Engl. Literature 1500-1900
33 (1993), 249-264) has shown that Cambridge was one of the battlegrounds
between continental Protestantism (along Calvinist lines) and the
English variant, which derived from Cranmer's 42 articles (later
39). William Perkins was a lecturer and university fellow who propounded
a rigorous form of Calvinism; contemporaries say 'he was able to
make his hearers [sic] hearts fall down and hairs stand upright'.
Perkins describes the sin of witchcraft as peculiar to those 'not
satisfied with […] knowledge, wit, understanding, memory' (p. 254)
and Pinciss portrays Marlowe as engaging directly with these controversies.

While
it may be rash to trace the content of Doctor Faustus to
the influence of a single preacher, particularly as Marlowe is re-working
material that predates his entry to Cambridge, there is one aspect
of the play to which Pinciss does rightly draw our attention. That
is the influence of the university environment on all versions of
Doctor Faustus. Faustus is the product of a university, he is a
scholar, he knows Latin and Greek, he has studied law, medicine,
theology and other subjects - and it is this knowledge that has
made him vulnerable. There is little doubt that, while lashing out
at Catholic malpractices in the chapbook, the anonymous author also
wished to impugn the 'scholars' of his age for being dissatisfied
with conventional learning, with the Bible, and wishing to go further.
One of the doctor's misdeeds is to rescue the missing comedies of
Terence and Plautus - something many a scholar has longed to do;
another is to reawaken Helen of Troy. An excessive interest in the
classics (in that very world that gave us tragedy!) produces a tragedy
of a more modern kind - the damnation of an individual, immortal
soul.

The
Pursuit of Classicism

Does
it matter whether Marlowe shared the Christian belief in the damnation
of the soul? Perhaps not, because he has given the story an entirely
new twist. The university is satirised, not because it's a hotbed
of heresy, but for other reasons. Marlowe the Cambridge graduate
paints a satirical picture of an overblown don who quotes semi-intelligible
chunks of Latin (3:16-22, etc.), whose fawning assistant mimics
him without being able to fathom him out, and who 'disputes' with
the diabolical emissary as though he were in a tutorial. Uncouth
hangers-on like Rafe and Robin imitate him, but like the sorcerer's
apprentice, the magic runs away with them.

So
we have on one level, a satire of university life for its own sake.
On another, we have the world of classical antiquity, which Faustus
tries to bring to life. This is a very complex issue, which we can
only briefly hint at. Faustus is the product of an age (the Renaissance)
that was deeply torn between whether to follow the Greeks and Romans
or to abandon them and follow only the Bible. The Humanists were
urging the former, the radical reformers wanted to destroy the legacy
of the past and to base their lives on the scriptures alone. Many
great thinkers were caught in the cross-fire (Erasmus). They tried
to use reason, while at the same time not dismissing the revealed
scriptures out of hand. One might argue that the outcome of such
an endeavour cannot be other than tragic. The central question that
Doctor Faustus asks is: is Faustus damnable because he goes
against God, or is he damnable because he fails as a scholar to
understand what he is meant to be teaching? Is his greatest flaw
that he parades the spirits of Alexander and Helen around as though
they were trophies, instead of learning something from them about
the value of harmony and humanity? This type of hamartia
would be in keeping with the pretentiousness of some of his earlier
utterances (the incantation). Is his sensual love for Helen a sign
of sensitivity and emotion ('make me immortal with a kiss', 12:83),
or an aberration, in which he falls for the superficial, sensually
exciting charms of classical beauty, but fails to appreciate its
deeper qualities?